This idyllic Swedish town is selling off land for the price of a cup of coffee

A quaint Swedish village is worth more than it realized.

Some 200 miles southwest of Stockholm, in the bucolic municipality of Götene, an initiative intended to bolster the local population by selling land for less than a dollar has proved too popular for its own good.

”It went viral and we’ve had thousands and thousands of requests to our telephone exchange,” Götene’s Mayor, Johan Månsson, told CNN of the program, in which 29 plots in the 5,000-resident main town were made available for one krona, or 9 US cents per 11 square feet. ”We have two people in our phone exchange in city hall and they have been very sweaty over the past few days. We’re basically in crisis mode.”

(Flowering meadow in the Kinnekulle area, Sweden. Kinnekulle is located on the southeastern shore of Lake Vänern. Götene is also located on the lake’s shores.Alamy Stock Photo)

Götene, a rural area with 5,000 residents living in the main town, and 13,000 in the wider municipality, is rural Sweden at its finest.

It’s located on the shores of Lake Vänern, not only Sweden’s largest lake but also the biggest in Scandinavia and the entire EU, at around 10 times the size of Lake Constance. Only Russia has larger lakes on the European continent.

For hikers, Götene also has a small mountain nearby – Kinnekulle. It’s also home to two UNESCO-rated sites: the Platåbergens Geopark and Lake Vänern Archipelago and Mount Kinnekulle Biosphere.

So why would such an idyllic town need to stage a fire sale of its land?

Mayor Johan Månsson says it’s a combination of the current economic downturn and dwindling rural populations.

”The housing market is currently very slow in our region and Sweden in general because of high interest rates and a bit of a recession, so we wanted to give an injection into the market,” he told CNN.

”We’re also seeing low birth rates and an ageing population so we have to do something, bring more people here.”

(Götene is located on the shore of Lake Vänern, Sweden’s largest lake.Getty Images/iStockphoto)

(Götene, marked on a map.Alamy Stock Photo)

Since it launched last month, four plots were quickly sold, but the town has since been forced to put the program on pause as a result of the deluge of interest.

The new plan now is to restart it in early August with a bidding process substituted for the flat rate.

“This was basically a bit of a stunt – we thought we’d be lucky to sell one or two,” he said. “With the interest we’re seeing now, it’d be fantastic if we sold all 30.”

Ref: This idyllic Swedish town is selling off land for the price of a cup of coffee (cnn, nypost)

Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto, Alamy Stock Photo